Sunday, March 27, 2016

I'm attaching an interview I did with my Grandmother about her time in OakRidge Tennessee. Her first husband was one of the people who helped build the Secret City. Yes, the Secret City, the one that was so much of a secret back in the 1940s that even the President of the United States didn't know it existed. I don't want to go into so much detail about that here, because you can Google that and learn about it yourself. But, I was doing a research paper on the Secret City back when I was in college at Clayton State University and I knew that grandmother had been there, so I interviewed her about it.

Minnie, Carrie, Marcille

C= Carrie Goins. A= Angela Pendleton.
S=Susie Hinote

Missing words marked with a _______

The interview is about Oak Ridge
Tennessee during WWII, but she also talks about her husbands, kids,
and present day events.

Interview
with Carrie Goins by Angela Pendleton

March
21 2008

C: I asked
Marcille1
if she could remember anything about that [Oak Ridge]. She said the
only thing she could remember was standing in a long line waiting on
something. She was about 3 years old. So if she remembered that at
3 years old, she is doing okay. …. (random talking from others)
We lived out on that, and it was all hush hush. No one could talk
about what they were doing. At that time they could put you up
against a brick wall and shoot ya.

C: They didn’t
take him because when he was about 13 years old he was on a hunting
trip and got shot through the wrist, so his fingers didn’t work
good enough to pull a gun. That was the only thing that kept him out.

S: So what
did he do?

C: He worked
on the construction helping to build all the bases…ship yards...we
went to so many different places during that time.

A: So, do you
remember what year you moved there?

C: um, it
must have been 1942, cause Scutter3
was born in 43 and we was already in Greensboro North Carolina. Tom
was born May of 41, and the war broke out…I think December the 5th
of the same year? I think December the 5th, some where
along there. (The attack on Pearl Harbor was actually December 7th
1941.)

A: Yeah, that was
Pearl Harbor.

C: Yeah, Pearl
Harbor. And that’s when we started, right after Pearl Harbor. So
it must have been…They went to Valdosta first, which we didn’t
go, that was Moody Field. He worked there. Then they sent him over
to _______ Montgomery. To a little old town called…Alabama….some
place over there right out of Montgomery. Then he went from there to
uh…Mississippi. And then went from Mississippi to Alabama, and
then went from Alabama to Greensboro. Then from Greensboro to that
base, and that’s where we were when the war ended. Or maybe we
went to the _____from Greensboro so it had to have been not 41, but
42 when we were there.

A: Did he go first,
and you came afterwards…or you went together?

C: We all went in
the same car. And we drove around till we found a big house. My
mother, and my two kids, and my husband all shared that big house for
a couple of months until we could get on the base or on that…what
ever it was.

A: reservation

C: Yeah, and then
when we got there, my husband put in for the…space on the base,
cause that’s where he was going to be workin. So we moved out of
the… as soon as we could get one, we moved out of my mother’s
place. In a little old town called Kingston, that’s where she
lived.

A: Kingston?

C: Kingston. I
can’t remember when the war ended, but that’s where we were.

A: 1946 I think.

C: Yeah, when they
dropped the bomb, but I was thinking more like 44, or 45.

(Victory over
Germany was in May 1945. The “Little Boy” was dropped on
Hiroshima Aug 6th 1945, followed by “Fat Man” on
Nagasaki in Aug. 9th 1945.)

A: So you got one of
those trailers? My report’s about how people like you felt about
living there. It’s not really about what happened.

C: We didn’t know
about what we was doin, it was just a job, that’s where…see, my
step father and my husband got a chance to go to work for a
construction company called J.A.Jones construction company. It was a
big organization. And they went around from base to base. When
they’d get one base started good, they’d…his workers, he would
transfer’em to another state. So we traveled quite a bit, and 5 or
6 times we moved during a couple or 3 years.

A: What did you
think about the trailer?

C: We just thought
it was a place to live.

A: Was it nice on
the inside?

C: Yeah, it was a
nice uh…it was a two bedroom furnished trailer. It was furnished.
It had a nice little kitchen to it with running water. But it had no
bathroom, so you went around…we went around the corner of two
trailers to the big bath house. And that’s where they had a lot of
wash tubs sitting there, three of them. With a rub board. (laughs)
and you went over there to do your laundry. And for the life of me I
can’t remember if I hung any out or not, don’t ever remember how
I dried my clothes, but I must have done something.

A: You must have
hung them out.

C: Must have hung
them out.

A: Was it really
muddy?

C: No, no it had
sidewalks all around. At night we just used…well, during the day
too, my kids and me, we’d use the slop jar. If you know what a
slop jar is.

A: Yeah

C: Well we had one.
And every morning I’d take the slop jar out to the bathhouse, and
emptied it out and washed it out good and carried it back. That’s
what we used; we didn’t go to the bathhouse. My husband did, but
we didn’t.

A: You didn’t want
to go in front of everybody?

C: No! Would you?

A: (laughs) no.

C: Back then,
everyone had a slop jar.

S: What’s a slop
jar?A: It’s a pot you go in.

C: A big pot, with a
big rim you could sit on it. It was comfortable enough, and then it
had a lid after you went, you could close it up. It was more
comfortable than that potty chair I’ve got, but it set on the
floor. And everybody used the slop jar. About this big around
(motions with her hands) and about that tall. It wasn’t too bad.

A: And your mom
stayed at the house in Kingston?

C: Yeah, she and her
husband and Scutter. They stayed in the house. They had a big lake
right by it. You could stay there in her kitchen, and look out and
see all these boats flying by.

A: Did they rent out
a room to anybody?

C: No.

A: Oh, they just
kept it to themselves. Cause, I was reading about the housing
shortage…no one had houses.

C: They didn’t
rent it out, but my brother George had fallen on the ship and uh,
hurt his self. And he was laid up at that time, so my mother took
him in to that house in Kingston and uh, nursed him back to health.
Cause they didn’t ever think he was ever going to walk again. She
gave him all kinds of physical therapies…or physical therapy. And
he got to where he could swing one leg and walk. My mother, as I
say, my mother, there was no other person like my mother. Ain’t
nothing, no job that she wouldn’t get in there and tackle. She’s
the one that made him walk again. He was 22 years old when he fell
like that…or 20 years old. He was young, ruined his whole life.
Good lookin guy.

A: So you were a
house wife, you didn’t join anything?

C: No, I was 27
years old before I had to go out and work a lick of anything.

A: Did he not want
you to, or did you just want…

C: He wouldn’t,
didn’t want me to work. He wanted me to be a housewife, he was
very jealous of me. I had blond hair, I don’t know whether I
looked cute or not, but I had blond hair. He must have thought I did
cause he didn’t want no one looking at me. I was his!

A: Did you plant a
garden or something?

C: Out there?

A: Yeah, you didn’t
just stay at home all day did you?

C: I did.

A: You didn’t join
a club or anything.

C: No but I went
across the street, there’s some other women just like me and we
visited back and forth and had coffee. And our kids played back and
forth with each other. So we stayed uh, kind of like Mandy4,
only we was more active in the neighborhood. Than like Mandy, cause
she doesn’t go across the street and have coffee or nothing does
she?

A: I don’t think
so.C: Well, we did there in the trailers cause it was full of
kids. Just one trailer like the other ya know.

A: Did Marcille ever
go to kindergarten there?

C: No

A: She was too
young?

C: She was 4 years
old, or 5 years old when we left there. I guess she was 5 years old.

A: So she almost
went.

C: Yeah, but they
didn’t have it back then. They didn’t have no kindergarten for 5
year old. You waited until you was 6 to go. They only started that
kindergarten, what, in the last 25 years or so. When I was a little
girl, we had our…and went to school…there was a grade before the
primer, I mean…before the first grade, they called the primer.
They’d say “What grade you in?” “I’m in the primer.”
That was probably similar to kindergarten. But you went through the
whole year of being in the primer. That was just getting used to
school and stuff. And then you’d go into the first grade. So we
was always a year behind because (laughing) of that. Cause of 6
years old you went into the primer.

A: Did you get the
Oak Ridge Journal? The newspaper?

C: I don’t
remember that, but probably.

A: It talked a lot
about music halls, and music programs that you could go to and sit to
listen to music.

C: I don’t
remember a whole lot of stuff that happened.

C: I was 20 or 21
years old with two iddy biddy kids, and a husband.

A: How did you get
your rations? How did they give them to you?

C: Um, they’d give
them out…I believe when you stood in line you got those coupons.
You’d go to the store there on the thing, and they’d issue the
meat and stuff, and coffee, and 5 pounds of sugar, and the coupons
did the gas and stuff like that. Every thing that you wanted just
about was gone with rations, and you couldn’t get it. They had
enough wholesome foods like grits, and flour and stuff like that that
you could get. But the other stuff, like meat and grease, or lard.
We bought what you call lard, you know what lard is?

A: Yeah

C: Well that’s
what we bought, and that was rationed. And all the meat was
rationed. I know we ate a lot of horse back then, because we bought
some steak, but they gave us some steak that looked like…had big
green and red, so red it was dangerous lookin. We ate that for
steak. I know it had to be horse…or elephant. Some kind other
than cow. Yeah, but we ate it, cause we were hungry. We didn’t
get much meat or anything like that back then.

A: When you went to
Knoxville to go shopping…I read that they were mad about Oak Ridge.
Were those people rude to you?

C: As far as I can
remember, they weren’t very nice. But as I was telling you the
other day, Tom, he was very active. He was going on 2 years old when
we’d go over there. And he was very active. He would slip away
from me, and I was so busy trying to keep up with my two kids that I
wouldn’t buy anything in Knoxville. My mother would shop, and I
would look after the kids, trying to keep up with them. My husband
was always very mad at me when I’d come home empty handed cause we
needed clothes. (laughs) And I couldn’t get any, cause I was too…
it was like…my life back then was like, when we went to Knoxville
it was like I had been way back in the boondocks and I was taken to
the city. I mean really, looked like it was something I had never
been to before. And it was. So, I was just star struck. But I was
so busy looking after my kids till I wouldn’t have time to shop.
That was me, I was a very shy person back then. Every time you
looked at me good back then, I would cry. I did.

A: Did you go to the
movies there? In Knoxville or Oak Ridge.

C: We didn’t go no
place there…we worked. And they was working long hours too. We
worked. And he would come home and take him a…would go out to the
bathhouse and take him a shower. And he was so tired he would just
fall off to sleep. Well, my kids was little and I was the type, I
didn’t care whether we went or not.

A: You didn’t get
bored?

C: No. I don’t
remember ever really being bored. And I’m not really bored living
here. Everybody thinks I’m bored, but I’m not. I wasn’t the
type of person that would be real bored.

A: And you didn’t
know what he was building?

C: No.

A: You just knew it
was a base?

C: We didn’t know
either, he just had a job to do and he was out there doing his job.
They weren’t allowed to talk about nothin like that.

A: Did you ever have
the maintenance people or the laundry people come around? I read
about a laundry service.

C: Yeah, there was a
laundry service that would come around and pick up the diapers.
Cause there was a woman next door who had a little baby. She had
diaper service. Not everybody had diaper service, but she did. So
they did have the diaper service back then on that base. They don’t
have that any more I don’t think, do they?

A: Did you ever have
the maintenance people come out to your trailer?

C: I don’t think
we ever needed them. If I remember.

A: Overall did you
like living there?

C: Yeah, cause back
then, and right now too, if I had to move, if your Pawpaw5
was still alive, where ever he took me, I would pick up the pieces.
I would be satisfied. I would be content where ever my junk was I
could always pick up the pieces and be satisfied. That was the type
of person I was, and I guess I still am. But if I had to move, I
would be satisfied, if I had him. But by myself, I’m not so sure.

A: When you used to
go to Knoxville, and then come back, did you have to wait in long
lines to get back through the gates?

C: I don’t ever
remember waiting. Most people who worked out there_________. I
don’t know if it was mandatory that we live out there or not. I
don’t ever remember being in line either, waiting on the gate.
There always was a person there to slide you in or out if you had the
I.D. You had to have your I.D.

A: You had to have
the badge?

C: Yeah, we all had
to wear dog collars back then. (dog tags) You got knocked off the
face of the earth but you’d have the dog collar. (laughing)

A: Did you know
anybody that joined clubs or any thing? That had anything bad to say
about the city?

C: No.

A: Everyone seemed
like they were happy?

C: They used to play
bingo and stuff like that, but I don’t ever remember hearing
anybody condemn anyone or the place. Cause if they had they’d been
shot probably. Everybody had to think pleasant thoughts, especially
on that post. We left there and went to Fort Myers after the war
ended. No one stayed out there; everyone went back where they came
from. So we went to Fort Myers. We saved enough war bonds that we
cashed them in and bought our first home when we got back there.

A: Did you buy those
when you were in Oak Ridge?

C: Yep, fact we was
getting one a month or something like that, we had quite a few of
them.

A: How much did they
cost?

C: Back then you
could buy them anywheres from $15 on up, depending on what you wanted
to buy, and how much money you wanted to spend each week.

A: What do war bonds
do?

C: They draw
interest. Then they would, you’d buy them and you were supposed to
be helping Uncle Sam. You’d buy them, and keep them, and they
would draw interest, like savings accounts does now. I still had
some of them when we moved up here, and I cashed them in. We cashed
them in up here and got…I don’t know… seven or eight hundred
dollars. We only had 3 or 4 but they had run up a lot of interest.

A: Didn’t they
tell you all the time, didn’t they pressure you to buy them?

C: They said you
should buy them. That was the situation, no one back then had bank
accounts or nothin. When they got paid, they kept their money. That
was a way to save, and that is the way we saved. I don’t guess we
were the only one, I guess everyone was doin it. Back then, they
[most citizens] didn’t have bank accounts, I don’t even remember
a bank.

A: So were your
trailers green on the outside?

C: I think so. Like
the army. Sort of remember they were all green. Ugly. Ugly on the
outside, looked decent on the inside. They were clean, clean enough.

A: The furniture was
nice enough?

C: The furniture was
nice, at each end we had a pull out couch. You know, it was like a
hidey bed…at both ends. And then we had a dinning room that had
the dinette in it, and then the kitchenette. A sink in all with
running water. That was a blessing, cause we could have had
to…(laughs)..we could have not had the running water.

A: You could have
had to pump it.

C: Yeah, but we
didn’t

A: So the kids slept
together on one end, and you slept on the end?

C: Yeah, they were
just small kids. Tom was about 2 years old, and I used to buy him…he
used to love those little Matchbox cars. So, when we’d go buy
groceries in Kingston, we’d go to a store called McCroys or
Woolworths I think, and I would buy him…I couldn’t afford but one
car at a time. A dime is what they cost. But he’d sit up on the
couch during the day. I think Marcille would go across the street
and play with the little girl, he’d sit up on that couch and roll
those little cars for hours at a time. But that child would not get
off that couch. He thoroughly enjoyed pushing those little ol’10
cent Matchbox cars, parking them…I don’t know what went through
his mind.

He went off and
joined the Navy, the day he turned 17 is the day he left home, went
to the Navy. He wanted to make a career out of that, but he had to
come home and help with his kids. He almost had 10 years, but he was
lucky, he was home just a week before he got the job at Ford. That
was his 2nd job ever, well when he was 15 he went to a
cotton mill in Albany, but it was just day work. Part time. But
when he was laid off for four years from Ford, him and Hilda6
got out and cleaned apartments, and painted apartments. He cleaned
carpets. They didn’t sit down during those four years, and I can’t
say that she sat down either. She got up and worked just like he
did, and made ends meet, during the times he was laid off at Ford.

It was a trying time
back then, there weren’t any places back then to stop and get a
sandwich or stop and get a hamburger. If you took a trip, you had to
go back home to fix your meals. That’s how much the world has
changed. We never knew what it was to stop along the road, we
traveled. To eat, you had to fix yourself a bag of sandwiches, and
ate them on the way. But it was stuff you yourself fixed, not stuff
you bought at a drive-in.

A: So where’d you
meet Pawpaw at?

C: In Albany. I was
working at a big overnight restaurant. They was open 24 hours. He
was in the Air Force. The Air Force base, Turner Field was there.
And that’s where I met him at. He would come in and sit at the
waitress table back there in the back. He was lookin for something,
I guess he was lookin for me. (laughs) He’d sit back there and,
we all felt sorry for him when he first started back there. Cause he
acted like he was so much of a loner, he didn’t have a friend in
the world. But he did have a lot of friends around. But he always
acted like he was a sad guy, that he was a loner. After I married
him and seen his folks, I understand why.

A: They were crazy?

C: No they weren’t
crazy, but he was their first child, he was the boy. Under him he
had 4 sisters, and they ruled the room. They kept him run out of the
house…so I guess they thought he messed up their house. They had
to keep the house clean, and their brother messed it up. “You get
out of here, don’t come back in here.” And I felt really sorry
for him, the way they treated him.

But I don’t
remember a lot about Oak Ridge, but that it was hush hush.

A: Did your husband
tell you it was hush hush, or did you just figure it out?

C: Every body knew
it was hush hush. No body was around to talk about it inside the
base or out of it.

A: They had signs up
everywhere?

C: Yeah, Keep you
eyes shut, no discussion of work, or the conditions that you worked
in.

A: I was reading
that everyone who worked for J.A. Jones lived in the same trailer
parks.

C: Yeah, they
weren’t fancy. They were common old green Army trailers. In the
winter there was a lot of snow on the ground. It looked really
bleak, like we were all doomed.

A: No one tried to
pretty it up, with some trees or something?

C: No, I don’t
even remember ever seeing any flowers planted. Everybody was just
busy working. And the wives, most of them had small children, so
they stayed home with those kids.

So, as with any great plans of mine, other things get in the way. I had been really excited to start over with grandmother's line. But here we are at the end of March and I am pretty much at the same place I was at the end of my last post in January.

You may be able to relate. I'm sure many of you have had other events get in the way of your hobbies. Or, you may just be too tired at the end of a work day to do anything other than sit down on the couch and watch a marathon of Supernatural on Netflix. (which is what I have been doing.)

Supernatural - a really fun show.

In March Our Genealogy Group had our 5th Annual All Day Workshop.

But, it was also the time to do part 3 of Thomas MacEntee's Genealogy Do-Over.

In month 3 the topics were to conduct a self interview and to conduct a family interview. .

For my self interview, I originally thought I would just verify that what I had down in

Family Tree Maker

for me was correct. So, I checked it, and it is correct but, because, I'm not dead,

I haven't had any military service, we have no children, and I'm not religious so there is no baptism information stuff listed, it really looked empty.

My "self interview" felt lame.

I decided to conduct a "self interview" on the StoryCorps app. I'm not too happy with it either. I really like the app. The app itself is awesome. It really helps with conducting the interview. I just wasn't actually prepared myself to do it. So, that is on my "to do list".

I also need to get my family interviews done. There are several people I could interview about my grandmother's family. But there are some people I should interview for sure, that is my mom, my sister, my brother and my aunt. I think I will be bending the rules a bit, and I may be doing a family interview in June, as my aunt lives in Kentucky and I will be attending my cousin's wedding then. I hope she will feel like taking a bit of time for me. My sister and my brother, will not know anything more than I do, but, I would like to get their perspective.

Guess what, I did interview my grandmother several years before she passed. I have a small bit of one sitting here next to me. I asked her where she was when she heard about Kennedy being shot. She said she was at the dentist's office with my mom. She said a lot of people were crying in the waiting room. Grandmother wasn't crying. She was really embarrassed actually because mom was laughing hysterically because the dentist had her on laughing gas. The only thing mom remembers about the day, is that she got a Donald Duck coloring book at the PX.

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About Me

Angela graduated from Clayton State University in 2008 with a Bachelors of Arts with an interest in Archiving. During her undergraduate years, Angela spent two semesters as an Archives' Intern and is responsible for the organization structure of the University Relations Photograph Collection.
Angela's passion is researching and collecting old photographs from 1845 to about 1920. Angela has presented programs to Our Genealogy Group on Using Google Earth in Genealogy, Stories in Stones, Identifying and Preserving Photos, Court Records and more. She is on the Steering Committee of Our Genealogy Group at Clayton State University.